August 2018

08/29/2018

On Wednesdays, I teach yoga during lunch hour at a gym above Union Station in Chicago. This would seem like the world’s least favorable location. The parking garage is dark and grey and enormous and the only spaces available are at the very top. The station itself is a leaky, drippy, crumbling dystopia. Each track has an audio system so that sight-impared passengers can find their way to their train, but the message that the soft, robotic female voice delivers is indecipherable and each recording doubles over the one for the track next to it. It sounds like it was recorded before the unpleasantness with the zombies or mega-drought or rapture or whatever is going to happen to to end us all.

Yet the place has become kind of friendly for me. I've rescued many a frightened tourist from the garage and led them to their train. "I'm going to take you down a long, dark tunnel," I say. "It is kind of scary. You will become concerned that I will rob you, but I will not." They eye each other nervously, trying to decide if I am kidding, but scramble after me down the elevator.

Several train operators take my yoga class. Same with the Korean woman who runs the flower stand, who gave me a flower on International Women's Day.

This last Wednesday, however, I was not feeling the train station. Or at least I was not feeling the vibe of the woman in the elevator with me. She takes my class on occasion, one of the rare yogis who live near the station rather than work in the surrounding skyscrapers.

“Oh, good, I’m not late,” she said as she saw me get on the elevator with her.

“Nope,” I said, pocketing my phone. I’d been looking at the “memories” section of my Facebook feed. It was my brother’s wedding anniversary and pictures of the wedding came up, including several of my dad.

And perhaps it was this that made what the woman said next so jarring, or maybe she’s just crazy.

“My niece and I were talking the other day about how fat the Queen is,” the woman said.

I looked at her blankly for a moment. “Of England?” I asked.

“She’s hugely fat. It’s insane how fat she is.”

I couldn’t think of what to say to this. Aside from the fact that I don’t actually think the Queen of England is all that fat, I’m not really interested in body-shaming anyone. Plus I was longing to get my phone back out and scroll through the wedding pictures again.

“She’s the Queen,” I said finally. “If I were queen who’s to say I wouldn’t let myself go? I mean, I’d be the queen, so.”

“Yeah, but she has the best nutritionists and access to trainers! It’s just irresponsible to be that fat.”

The elevator opened up and we found ourselves in the lobby of the gym. I was grateful. This woman takes a second elevator up to the yoga room, and I take the stairs. I don’t take these stairs because I feel like I want to get maximum steps in or anything. I take them because until that exact moment, I had no idea that there was another elevator. This did not seem like a ride I wanted to take, however.

“The Queen of England is like 200 years old,” I said, as we parted ways. “Give her a break.”

Somehow we reached the yoga room at the same time, and she picked right back up where she’d left off.

“But really, she’s just so hugely fat, more so than other old ladies.”

I stared at this woman for a moment, then took out my phone to google images of the Queen of England.

“She’s fine,” I said

“Look at her!” the woman insisted.

Luckily for both me and Queen Elizabeth, the doors to the studio opened and the previous class exited. I vowed to time my arrival for class differently next time, or at least wait on a different elevator to avoid this woman who says she’s an artist, which I believe because she seems both quirky and funky, but also seems to use that vibe to cloak her rabid schadenfreude for debatably overweight English royalty.

The class went fine, and I didn’t linger very long after it was over, not wanting to get into a debate about additional sovereign powers and their BMI, but also because I wanted to grab a salad from the food court at the train station.

So I took the stairs back to the elevator to my favorite fast food place, where they were still selling their lobster salad (why yes, I eat train station lobster salad!) and stood in line behind a man and a little girl.

He was elderly, moving with the slowness that comes of advanced age. He wore a suit, complete with a hat. She was maybe 10 or so, wearing pink shorts, her braids hanging halfway down her back. I assumed that she was his granddaughter, and I wondered about their story, where they were going, if they traveled often or this was a one-time thing. He laid out exact change for a fountain soda on the counter, and gave her the proffered fountain cup.

There was something about this gesture, this gentle man that looked nothing like my dad but somehow reminded me profoundly of my him and suddenly, out of nowhere, a wave of grief so powerful washed over me such that I became nauseous. I missed my dad so much I found myself fighting back tears.

I paid for my salad without speaking and walked dazedly back through the station and down the escalator. I was thinking about all the times my dad bought me food or a soda. He always paid. He was happy to pay. I mourned the fact that he would never take Ryan on a train trip, never buy her a silly fountain soda, though he would have been glad to do so. His time with her was so short, but he’d made it so meaningful, reading her books or taking her strawberry picking or folding his 60-something frame into a sled and careening down a snowy hill.

I took the escalator and walked miserably to the tunnel that led to the parking garage, grief resolving itself into an aching sadness, and I looked up to see Irene, the woman who runs the flower shop and takes my yoga class when she can.

She greeted me warmly, apologizing for missing class all summer. “I go to Canada,” she said. Her daughters are far-flung.

“That’s okay,” I said. “You’ll come back when you can.”

She looked at me for a moment. “I give you flower,” she said, and pulled me into a tiny room crammed with ribbon and cellophane and scissors and raffia. It smelled like roses. She ducked into a walk-in refrigerator and came out with a bouquet.

“Oh my God, they’re beautiful,” I said, as Irene used a cutting board to slice some length off the stems. “Thank you.”

I gave her a hug and left, walking through the leaky tunnel to the parking garage. I realized that for a moment, I’d forgotten to be sad, and as those feelings began to creep back in I found that they were tempered by a hug and some train station flowers.

If I were the kind of person to believe such things, I would have thought that my dad sent her at that moment, taken it as a sign that he’s still with me somehow.

I don't necessarily believe that, but I am deeply grateful, deeply aware that, whether it was a coincidence or providence, it is the human connections that drag you forward through your grief. And if Dad didn’t somehow direct Irene into my path, he taught me well how to recognize some detail that makes life worth living even in the midst of a terrible circumstance and crushing sadness in a filthy train station, beauty that makes each day a gift.

I met a guy on the way who asked me where he could catch the bus to Rockford. I told him that I had no idea, but that if he walked in the opposite direction from me, he’d run into plenty of people who could, and I wished him luck, and I meant it with all my heart.